Five familiar faces at X Factor boot camp

Five singers who made it through to the judges’ houses stage of The X Factor in 2011 have reportedly reached the boot camp stage of this year’s series.

According to The Sun Jade Richards – who was controversially dumped by Kelly Rowland last year – is back for another try, along with Melanie McCabe, Joe Cox, Carolynne Poole and Sian Phillips.

All of them narrowly missed out last time around, with Louis rejecting Carolynne for his over 25s category, while Gary Barlow told Joe he wasn’t ‘quite ready’ for the live shows.

Melanie also failed to make it as one of Kelly Rowland’s final four, while Sian was dropped from the show after it emerged that she was unable to get a US visa due to having a criminal conviction.

“There are a lot of familiar faces but they all deserve to be here,” a source told the paper.

“Everyone will be thrilled to see Jade back. If she makes it to the live shows she’ll have loads of support.”

“It would be silly to say no to such talent just because they’ve been on before, even if it does run the risk of being a bit repetitive.

“The known acts aren’t getting any special treatment but if they impress they will go through to judges’ houses again.”

A number of hopefuls have made it to the finals of the show on their second attempt, including Alexandra Burke, who was initially rejected at the judges’ houses stage before returning to the series in 2008 and winning.